Wood Pallet Gardens

Using wood pallets for plant display and support can be a low-cost option for creating a vertical garden. Wood pallets can also be re-constructed into garden benches. You already knew that, right?

I knew that, too, before visiting Italy, but I hadn’t seen so many wood pallet gardens in public spaces. This blog post shows some ways wood pallets have been put into productive use in small towns in Tuscany.

Wood pallets as vertical gardens for small spaces

Small businesses use wood pallets to make their storefronts more attractive. The pallets don’t need much construction work to re-fit them as vertical gardens. When placed by a shop’s entrance, the pallet-gardens of living plants, and especially flowers (which are mood enhancers), give a signal to shoppers that the store is a good place to visit.

The vertical gardens created with wood pallets are usually stained or painted to match or complement other parts of the storefront, and they always look good.

They also look pretty easy to set up. A homeowner, or apartment renter, or condo-dweller, who has a narrow planting space could use wood pallets in a similar way to create a vertical garden for food plants.

In these vertical gardens, the planting spaces are not always packed solid with potting mix (I checked). Instead, in some, the plants are in individual pots. This would make replacing mature/finished plants an easy task. Just replace a pot containing an old plant with a pot containing a younger, less mature plant!

Small crops that could grow in the small spaces in this plant-support system include salad greens, small herbs, strawberries, and edible flowers.

Another wood pallet for plant display and support by a storefront in Tuscany. PHOTO/Amygwh

One of our local, posh restaurants has its sign mounted on stacked wood pallets. The wood has been sanded, then either stained or painted with chalk-paint (I can’t decide which), then distressed by sanding again.

The stacked pallets include a couple of wood planting boxes, complete with the living plants that we find so appealing, wedged between slats. It looks much more elegant than it sounds. See the image in this post for La Briciola Ristorante.

The particular version pictured below doesn’t allow for as many plants as the ones above, but gardeners are creative. There is probably a way to increase the number of planting boxes supported by the pallets.

Wood pallet benches as plant supports

The red bench made from wood pallets in the “inset image” at the top of this blog post is one of many brightly painted benches in the town of Chianciano. We first saw them last summer, and they still are all over town this summer.

The benches create cheerful spots of color in the mostly-stone town, and each one supports a container-plant display.

The overall impression created is one of welcome. I suspect that was the the goal.

Another wood pallet bench in the same town isn’t brightly painted, but it supports container plants in a completely different way. The plants are in a “holder” along the top of the back, leaving more room for people to sit on the bench! Tiny wood pallet gardens on bench-backs could be useful for spaces where sunlight might not reach the ground.

The back of the bench is supported by a post, so any sitters who want to rest against the back can do so without tipping over. It’s a pretty clever design, and space for plants is a great addition.

The bench also provides advertising space for the store it sits across the sidewalk from. The name of the shop is stenciled across the upper piece of wood on the bench’s back. It is possible, though, to create your own garden logo to stencil across that upper piece of wood. You can advertise your personal garden philosophy instead of a store.

Are you short on garden space? One or more of these wood pallet creations may spark an idea of a way to create more space for garden crops in your own yard. If repurposed wood pallets work for these towns in Tuscany, for shops and for restaurants that serve Amazing Food, then they might be ok for suburban Atlanta, or Birmingham, or Laffayette.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Hi Vicki! I hadn’t seen these versions of pallet-gardens before, either. I do talk with lots of people who say their gardening space is very limited, though, and I was thinking of them as I put the blog post together.

I hope that your garden is productive and fun to be in this summer! Looking forward to hearing all the local garden news when I get back in town. -Amy

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